Chapter 435: Ion thruster

The research and development tasks of the new aircraft aroused great interest in Chen Xin.
For him, creating a new aircraft depends only on whether his imagination is rich enough, not on other conditions.
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However, Chen Xin shouldn't be too brainstorming. After all, he must consider the actual production issue. Even if Chen Xin can produce the X-wing interstellar fighter in "Star Wars", the country cannot even make a lightsaber.
This is the gap between the industrial system and the overall technology, and it cannot be made up simply by Chen Xin opening up.
Therefore, even if Chen Xin wants to design a new fighter, he must also consider the country's industrial production capacity. In addition to design problems, whether a new fighter can be built is also affected by many factors such as cost and technology.
This also led to Chen Xin not being able to use too exaggerated technology, it is best to design and research on the basis of existing technology.
For Chen Xin, it is very easy to make the new aircraft design advanced. After all, there are so many sci-fi works, just copy one and rely on the system.
But to make the new aircraft more realistic and less advanced... it takes some effort to design.
Fortunately, the place where Chen Xin was at this time was the temporary capital of Yan Nation. There were a large number of scientific research forces and related materials here, and Chen Xin precisely had the authority to call these materials.
Of course, Chen Xin can't understand the specific scientific research materials, but if someone sorts out a technical catalog and brief introduction that Yan Guo can use in the field of aircraft manufacturing, Chen Xin can still find what he wants.
For an airplane, the most important thing is of course the engine known as the heart.
Yan Guo had been sprayed with fighter jets all the time. The biggest problem was the performance of the engine and its production and research and development capabilities. The lack of a self-developed and reliable engine was once a huge regret for Yan Guo in the aviation field.
Later, after the efforts of countless people, Yan Guo finally made a breakthrough in this field, and the engine manufacturing and research and development finally achieved fruitful results.
However, for the new aircraft, Chen Xin does not intend to use the existing aircraft engines.
Naturally, the reason need not be repeated. Chen Xin's optimistic view is the electric propulsion system originally used in the aerospace field, also called ion thruster.
Simply put, it is to electrolyze the working fluid into charged particles through electric energy, and then to obtain thrust by accelerating the charged particles.
This is also a relatively common engine in sci-fi works. It is usually applied to spacecraft, and it is not considered to be used in the atmosphere.
This is mainly because the thrust that the ion thruster can generate is too small, or the power is too large.
The ion thruster can accelerate the charged particles to tens or hundreds of kilometers per second, or even higher. In this case, if a relatively large thrust is to be generated, the power required by the ion thruster will be very large, and at the same time It also needs a huge amount of energy to drive it.
Taking the current more mature technology on Bluestar, if the power of the ion thruster is increased to 200KW, it can generate about 0.45 kilograms of thrust. Although it is not obvious in the atmosphere, if it is raised into space, After getting rid of the influence of gravity, this thrust is enough to push 2 tons of heavy objects.
Of course, this is a result limited by the original technological level of Bluestar.
With the nuclear reactor technology currently mastered by Yan State, it can already provide a micro-reactor with a power of more than 10 MW that can be mounted on an airplane, which is enough to provide sufficient energy for the engine.
What Chen Xin had to do was to reduce the jet speed of the ion thruster, thereby increasing its thrust.
This is the same as the principle of a jet engine reducing the jet speed and increasing the engine thrust.
Kinetic energy Ek=mv^2/2, momentum=mv, thrust is determined by momentum.
For aero engines, the external exhaust is lost energy.
In the case of constant momentum mv, reducing the exhaust velocity can reduce the energy taken away by the exhaust and improve efficiency.
Similarly, keeping the momentum constant and reducing the exhaust velocity requires a higher mass of working fluid, that is, inhaling more air.
So in layman's terms, if an aero engine wants to be efficient, it needs to push a large amount of air at a low speed.
However, for ion thrusters, although the original ideal is good, its demand for air, that is, working fluid, is far lower than that of ordinary aero engines.
The current ion thruster consumes the working medium in milligrams per second, and the generated thrust is 0.1 N. If this value is enlarged to the extent that it can meet the thrust requirements of jet fighters, the working medium will be consumed. Still not worth mentioning.
Taking the Taihang engine independently developed by Yanguo as an example, its thrust can reach 13.5 tons, which is 132,300 N in cattle, and the corresponding working fluid consumption is about 0.13 kg per second.
The consumption of this working fluid is definitely not big. Take the Taihang engine as an example, its air intake is 118kg/sec, UU reading www. uukanshu.com is almost a thousand times the ion thruster.
Therefore, under the premise that air is also used as the working medium, the air intake required by the ion engine is quite trivial, even similar to that of an ordinary family car.
As for restricting the power of ion thrusters in the atmosphere, it is no longer a problem in the face of the abundant power provided by small nuclear reactors.
The engine problem is solved. For an aircraft, the rest is nothing more than aerodynamic layout, structural design and other details, and these details can be solved with the classic physical means of using large flying bricks.
As long as the power is sufficient, no matter how bad aerodynamic layout and structural design are, it can fly, as long as it does not fall apart.
Of course, Chen Xin hasn't reached the point of being frantic. He plans to make a big flying brick, and he plans to design the shape of the plane well.
Just as a non-professional person, he considered more handsome appearance than rationality.
Although according to a causal ruler, the better-looking appearance also means the more advanced the technology, but for ordinary aircraft designers, after all, the appearance must be adapted to the technology.
But for Chen Xin...there is a system, even if he builds a Gundam, he can also supersonic speed, so in the shape of the aircraft, he can be more inclined to look than technology.
After some insights and reference to existing sci-fi works, the final design that Chen Xin finally came up with looked more like a space fighter than a fighter used in the atmosphere. The angular ones are handsome, but Not round at all.
And the most important thing is that of the three thrusters installed by Chen Xin on the plane, two of them are installed on the wings, which is completely different from the existing fighter design layout.